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She struggled to raise herself out of the rocker, and she slowly dragged her weak legs to the fireplace. She reached out her scrawny arms, and her bony hands grasped the poker. The anticipation caused her heart to pound rapidly against her chest, and her breath came in raspy gasps as the strength surged into her skinny legs. She hastened to Hubert before she lost her nerve.

Ecstasy covered Lavinia’s face as she bashed Hubert repeatedly with the heavy poker. He offered no resistance, but the exertion was too much for Lavinia.

With the poker still clutched in her hands, she stumbled back to the rocker and collapsed into the security of its bosom while still gasping for breath.

Her chest heaved one final sigh, and then Lavinia was forever still.

Several days elapsed before Lavinia’s worried neighbors summoned the police to investigate the silence emanating from her house. The uniformed officers forced open the front door and then halted in puzzled amazement when they saw Lavinia slumped in her rocker with the poker still clutched in her hands.

There was a satisfied smile fixed on her withered face, and her lifeless eyes stared vacantly at the battered television set.

The Devil and Carlo Gambino

by David Mazroff

From stowaway to Godfather of the Mafia, Carlo Gambino’s rise to black fame in the dread annals of Organized Crime followed a trail of terror and death. Long after his blood buddies were laid in their well-deserved graves, Gambino lives on; a monument to shrewd survival in a world of his own ungodly making!

* * *

The godfather of the Mafia, Carlo Gambino, arrived in this country as a stowaway on an Italian freighter. When the ship docked in Norfolk, Virginia, he dashed from it in the middle of the night and made his way to friends who were awaiting him.

At the time, he was twenty-one years old, a heavy-set young man, five feet seven inches tall and weighing two hundred pounds.

He was only one of many men who came to this country from Italy and Sicily, some through Canada and Mexico, others by way of New Orleans, and still others as he had come, through various ports of coastal cities in America, all of them filtering in to be enlisted in the different mobs as musclemen.

There was nothing about Carlo Gambino in December, 1921 that justified the premise that one day he would become the most powerful man in the underworld. Just off the boat, he was uncouth, uneducated, and lacked the kind of organizational ability of a Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, or Lepke Buchalter.

He did possess an uncanny shrewdness, innate intelligence, and a demeanor so benign as to give him the appearance of being an innocent in a jungle of foxes and wolves. His appearance fooled many men: He was hard as carbonized steel underneath.

Gambino’s first job was as a warehouse worker for a trucking firm operated by his first cousins, Paul and Pete Castellano. In the custom of many of the Italian and Sicilian members of the mobs, Gambino married Vincenza Castellano, sister of Paul and Pete.

The marriage gave him a little clout in the organization. He was aided in his climb up the ladder, a little at a time, not only by the Castellanos but by many of their associates because he was in the family.

He earned a reputation quickly for efficiency in the many different tasks he was assigned, some of which required muscle and others merely persuasion. He was soft-voiced, gentle in his approach.

“There are so many young hoodlums around,” he would say to a store owner. “They break windows in the stores, steal merchandise right under your nose, drop those nasty stink bombs, yes? Ah, but we will protect you from all that. We pass the word to these young hoodlums that it would be bad for them to molest you.”

The proprietor of the store got the idea, however soft Gambino’s voice. If the price Gambino asked was a little too high to pay then he was not above negotiating and coming to terms. However, an outright refusal to pay tribute resulted in immediate violence.

That was his way, and only the most foolhardy learned by experience that Gambino’s gentle approach was not a sign of weakness, but a mere prelude to destruction of business and person.

Gambino came to the attention of Lucky Luciano at a time when Luciano was plotting the murder of Joe “The Boss” Masseria in order to take over control of the mob. Luciano sent for Gambino and made him a member of the family.

Thus Gambino came into contact with many of the hoods who were to rise high in the hierarchy of the Organization, as it was often referred to by various members of the crime cartel. Among them were Meyer Lansky, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, and the two bosses of Murder, Incorporated, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter and Jake “Gurrah” Shapiro.

Gambino watched, listened, and learned.

During the gang wars between Joe “The Boss” Masseria and his arch rival Salvatore Maranzano, Gambino was the least known of all the “soldiers” in the Masseria camp. This inconspicuousness was a matter of choice.

Gambino followed orders, concentrated on his own little rackets, prudently saved his money so that he might invest in bigger legal and illegal enterprises. But more than anything else in his plan to achieve a higher place in the scheme of the Organization, he avoided friction with everyone. When Joe “The Boss” Masseria was murdered and Luciano took over the mob he called Gambino in for a talk.

“Carlo, I have been following your operations for some time now. I know all about your three handbooks.” Luciano shrugged. “Small time, true, but it tells me you know how to do things. I know, too, that you have been peddling moonshine liquor that you buy for five dollars a gallon and sell for twenty to about two or three dozen private customers, a sort of house to house deal.”

Luciano nodded. “That’s pretty smart. No payoffs to anybody, just a nice neat profit of maybe a grand or two a month, right? Well, you can keep all those little rackets you’ve got. You’re not interfering with any of the Organization’s operations, which means you’re not stepping on anybody’s toes. However, you’re a loner in all this. If anyone wanted to muscle in on you for a piece of the action you would have no comeback. You couldn’t come to me because what you’re doing is strictly a personal business. So, I’m going to consolidate all of it into the Organization. I’m going to add to what you’ve got.”

Gambino bowed in a respectful gesture. “I am grateful, Don Salvatore.”

“I would prefer you address me as Charles.”

Gambino bowed again. “As you wish, Don Charles.”

“I have spoken to Joe Adonis about your handbooks. He controls that end of it for the Organization. He has agreed to put in the wire service in your three handbooks and bankroll the action. In this way you can take any size wager that may come in. Your split with Joey A. will be thirty per cent of the net. The Organization will take seventy per cent. For that you get the wire service, the bankrolling, and full protection.”

Gambino bowed again. “It is most fair, Don Charles.”

“Good. The whiskey business is all yours. We are not concerned with that. Furthermore, I have it on the strongest information that the Prohibition Act will be repealed. Keep that in mind.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Good. That is all for now. I appreciate that you have been loyal and this is my way of rewarding you. That is all.”

Gambino thought a great deal of what Luciano had told him. If, as Luciano said, this Prohibition would be repealed and liquor would be sold legally, then surely the price for a bottle of whiskey would be much higher than what he could offer. Since moonshine whiskey cost him only a dollar a quart he could sell it for three dollars a quart and still make money as well as beat the price of legal stuff — and that was very much okay with Carlo Gambini.